PREMIERE: Lunch Ladies Make Dream-Pop for the Garage on Debut LP

The New Jersey quartet are releasing Down on the Sunset Strip on Friday.

You wouldn’t expect a group called Lunch Ladies to serve up something so tasteful. That’s the first half of a bad joke, but it also seems like the kind of joke that the New Jersey quartet front by Matt Whitley and Cynthia Rittenbach might appreciate. Their debut LP, the decidedly not-LA-sounding Down on Sunset Strip, is a collection of dreamy pop songs that feint in the direction of nightmare before winding into something closer to a youthful peace. It’s serious stuff, in other words—“Love is overrated,” Rittenbach sings in the song of the same name, and she means it—but it’s playful, too, something like what Beach House might sound like if they actually spent time at the beach.

Down on Sunset Strip is out March 10 via Good Eye Records, but today we’re pleased to be premiering the entire record. You can give it a listen below, and pick up a copy for yourself here, and if you happen to be in the greater New Brunswick, NJ, area on Friday, you can hit up their album release show.